Opening credits for film festival that's not just about film

Published on Tuesday 17 May 2011 16:14

LIVE music and club nights, outdoor park screenings, a bike-powered mobile cinema and fashion celebrations will be staged as part of this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, organisers have revealed.

The festival's much-vaunted overhaul will see international premieres rub shoulders with a "pop-up film school" and the celebration of film soundtracks, while a student union building will become a "hub".

An Irish comedy-thriller, The Guard, will be the opening gala, with stars Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle hoped to attend the gala at the Festival Theatre.

Other highlights unveiled at the event's launch yesterday include Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall starring as an ageing porn actress in Meet Monica Valour, Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, the comedy Jack Goes Boating, and Scottish actor Martin Compston's latest film, Ghosted.

Former war reporter Martin Bell will be at the festival to host a major strand featuring the work of combat journalists - including Hell and Back Again, an acclaimed documentary about the conflict in Afghanistan, and The Bang Bang Club, a drama about the true-life experiences of four photographers working during the final days of apartheid in South Africa.

However, there is no place at the festival for Scottish director Lynne Ramsay's hotly-tipped new film, We Need To Talk About Kevin, which has been wowing audiences at Cannes this month, despite its star being a long-serving EIFF patron.

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Festival director James Mullighan admitted he would have loved to have been able to show the film, blaming its release in the late autumn for not getting it, but was unapologetic about the event's controversial moves to ditch red-carpet events, VIP parties and competition prizes in the face of funding cuts.

Mr Mullighan, who was appointed in December, said he did not think audiences in Edinburgh would miss the glamour of previous events, but insisted he was still "hopeful" many big names would end up coming this year. He said the public would be able to mingle freely with industry figures at a new delegate centre at the Teviot Row student union, as they are able to when it acts as a Fringe venue.

However, with the film festival using only two conventional cinemas this year, dropping its closing gala and showing only half the number of films as previous years, many of its headline-grabbing events will be of an unconventional nature.

St Andrew Square Garden will be the venue for four days of free "al fresco" screenings. Rap star Mike Skinner, better known as the Streets, will be staging his own event, inspired by his favourite film soundtracks.

There will also be special events hosted by fashion designer Bella Freud and photographer Rankin, and a late-night event is to be hosted by Scotland's Chemikal Underground record label.Documentaries being premiered at the festival include the climate change film Burning Ice, which features a host of celebrities including Jarvis Cocker, Martha Wainwright and KT Tunstall,; a Bob Marley biopic; and Troubadours, about the golden age of American music, celebrating the likes of Carole King, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell.

International movies being showcased in Edinburgh include Turin Horse, Hungarian director Bela Tarr's smash hit at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, and Post Mortem, by acclaimed Chilean director Pablo Larrain.

The festival had already announced a string of major UK films for this year, including David Hare's new political thriller Page Eight, starring Bill Nighy, who will be speaking about his career at the event.

It is also hoped actor Ewan McGregor will be in Edinburgh for the UK premiere of fellow Scot David Mackenzie's new film, the sci-fi thriller Perfect Sense.

Other British films include a Glasgow-set romantic comedy, Fast Romance, and Stormhouse, which depicts the military capture of a supernatural force in a secret underground base.

New British films missing from the programme include Scottish producer Douglas Rae's Decoy Bridge, which actors David Tennant and Kelly Macdonald shot on the west coast of Scotland last year, and One Day, the romantic comedy Anne Hathaway shot in Edinburgh last year.

The EIFF has been thrown into turmoil over the past year with the departure of artistic director Hannah McGill, managing director Ginnie Atkinson and chairman Iain Smith.

Mr Mullighan admitted his tenure had been both "intense" and "fraught" at times, as he had had to deal with intense speculation about its future direction.

But he insisted he had been happy to inherit a commitment to shake up the festival, which was announced on the same day as his appointment, insisting it should not have to "cling to a format".

"Repetition can sometimes lead to boredom and staleness," he said.

"There was an opportunity to look at every nook and cranny of the festival. There was a feeling that it had not really embraced the opportunity of being held in June, in the same way that the Fringe does."

Mr Mullighan refused to say by how much the festival's budget had been cut in the face of a loss of funding from the UK Film Council and long-running backer Standard Life.However, he said the event had been able to attract major new sponsors, including Nokia and Cutty Sark.

He added: "In our 65th year, rather than ease into senior citizenship, the EIFF team has instead taken the bold and essential step of looking to the future and reinventing the festival for modern audiences.

"It has been an extremely exciting and sometimes even daunting process, and one that has sparked much debate from organisers, advisers and fans alike. In a short space of time we have developed some genuinely innovative content for the 2011 programme, building on the strong heritage and reputation of Edinburgh as one of the original pioneers of the global film festival."

This year's festival runs from 15-26 June.